25.1 MySQL Enterprise Monitor Overview

MySQL Enterprise Monitor is an enterprise monitoring system for MySQL that keeps
an eye on your MySQL servers, notifies you of potential issues and
problems, and advises you how to fix the issues. MySQL Enterprise Monitor can
monitor all kinds of configurations, from a single MySQL server
that is important to your business, all the way up to a huge farm
of MySQL servers powering a busy web site.

The following discussion briefly summarizes the basic components
that make up the MySQL Enterprise Monitor product. For more information, see the
MySQL Enterprise Monitor manual, available at
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-monitor/en/.

MySQL Enterprise Monitor components can be installed in various configurations
depending on your database and network topology, to give you the
best combination of reliable and responsive monitoring data, with
minimal overhead on the database server machines. A typical
MySQL Enterprise Monitor installation consists of:

One or more MySQL servers to monitor. MySQL Enterprise Monitor can monitor
both Community and Enterprise MySQL server releases.

A MySQL Enterprise Monitor Agent for each monitored host.

A single MySQL Enterprise Service Manager, which collates information from the
agents and provides the user interface to the collected data.

MySQL Enterprise Monitor is designed to monitor one or more MySQL servers. The
monitoring information is collected by using an agent,
MySQL Enterprise Monitor Agent. The agent
communicates with the hosts and MySQL servers that it monitors,
collecting variables, status and health information, and sending
this information to the MySQL Enterprise Service Manager.

The information collected by the agent about each MySQL server and
host you are monitoring is sent to the
MySQL Enterprise Service Manager. This server
collates all of the information from the agents. As it collates
the information sent by the agents, the MySQL Enterprise Service Manager
continually tests the collected data, comparing the status of the
server to reasonable values. When thresholds are reached, the
server can trigger an event (including an alarm and notification)
to highlight a potential issue, such as low memory, high CPU
usage, or more complex conditions such insufficient buffer sizes
and status information. We call each test, with its associated
threshold value, a rule.

These rules, and the alarms and notifications, are each known as a
MySQL Enterprise Advisors. Advisors
form a critical part of the MySQL Enterprise Service Manager, as they provide
warning information and troubleshooting advice about potential
problems.

The MySQL Enterprise Service Manager includes a web server, and you interact with
it through any web browser. This interface, the MySQL Enterprise Monitor User Interface,
displays all of the information collected by the agents, and lets
you view all of your servers and their current status as a group
or individually. You control and configure all aspects of the
service using the MySQL Enterprise Monitor User Interface.

The information supplied by the MySQL Enterprise Monitor Agent processes also
includes statistical and query information, which you can view in
the form of graphs. For example, you can view aspects such as
server load, query numbers, or index usage information as a graph
over time. The graph lets you pinpoint problems or potential
issues on your server, and can help diagnose the impact from
database or external problems (such as external system or network
failure) by examining the data from a specific time interval.

The MySQL Enterprise Monitor Agent can also be configured to collect detailed
information about the queries executed on your server, including
the row counts and performance times for executing each query. You
can correlate the detailed query data with the graphical
information to identify which queries were executing when you
experienced a particularly high load, index or other issue. The
query data is supported by a system called Query Analyzer, and the
data can be presented in different ways depending on your needs.